Wednesday, 24 April 2019

Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is shaping how we live and work today. Like it or not, it has become an integral part of our lives. Companies and businesses of all shapes and sizes are now turning to cloud Computing. But nothing is perfect and Cloud Computing is no exception. While it is vastly beneficial, it also has some risks and concerns that should not be overlooked. So in this section, let’s discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Cloud computing in detail.

Advantages of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an emerging technology that almost every company switched to from on-premise technologies. Whether it is public, private or hybrid, Cloud computing has become an essential factor for the companies to rise up to the competition. Let us find out why Cloud is so much preferred over the on-premise technologies.

◈ Cost efficiency – The biggest reason behind shifting to cloud computing is that it takes considerably lesser cost than an on-premise technology. Now the companies need not store the data in disks anymore as the Cloud offers enormous storage space, saving money and resources of the companies.

◈ High Speed – Cloud computing lets you deploy the service quickly in fewer clicks. This quick deployment lets you get the resources required for your system within fewer minutes.

◈ Excellent accessibility – Storing the information in cloud allows you to access it anywhere and anytime regardless of the machine making it highly accessible and flexible technology of present times.

◈ Back-up and restore data – Once the data is stored in Cloud, it is easier to get the back-up and recovery of that, which is quite a time taking process on-premise.

◈ Manageability – Cloud computing eliminates the need for IT infrastructure updates and maintenance since the service provider ensures timely, guaranteed and seamless delivery of your services and also takes care of all the maintenance and management of your IT services according to the service level agreement (SLA).

◈ Sporadic Batch processing – Cloud computing lets you add or subtract resources and services according to your needs. So, if the workload is not 24/7, you need not worry about the resources and services getting wasted and you won’t end up stuck with unused services.

◈ Strategic edge – Cloud computing provides your company a competitive edge over the competitors when it comes to accessing the latest and mission critical applications whenever you need them without having to invest your time and money on installations. It lets you focus on keeping up with the business competition by offering access to most trending and in demand applications and doing all the manual work of installing and maintaining the applications for you.

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

Every technology has positive and negative aspects that are highly important to discuss before implementing it. Aforementioned points highlight the benefits of using cloud technology and following discussion will outline the potential cons of Cloud Computing.

◈ Vulnerability to attacks – Storing data in cloud may pose serious challenge of information theft since in cloud every data of your company is online. Security breach is something that even the best organizations have suffered from and it’s a potential risk in cloud as well. Though advanced security measures are deployed on cloud, still storing a confidential data in cloud can be a risky affair.

◈ Network connectivity dependency – Cloud computing is entirely dependent on the internet. This direct tie up with internet means that you need a reliable and consistent internet service as well as a good connection speed and bandwidth for your business to reap the benefits of cloud computing.

◈ Downtime – Downtime is considered as one of the biggest potential downside of using Cloud computing. Your cloud providers may sometimes face technical outages which can happen due to various reasons such as loss of power, low internet connectivity, data centres going out of service for maintenance etc. This can lead to a temporary downtime in your cloud services.

◈ Vendor lock in – When in need to migrate from one cloud platform to another, your company might face some serious challenges because of the differences between vendor platforms. Hosting and running the applications of your current cloud platform on some other platform may cause support issues, configuration complexities and additional expenses. Your data might also be left vulnerable to security attacks due to compromises that might have been made during migrations.

◈ Limited control – Cloud customers may face limited control over their deployments. The cloud services run on remote servers which are completely owned and managed by the service providers, which makes it hard for the companies to have the level of control that they would want over their back-end infrastructure.